This is War
by waxonwings
Summary: Few dared to challenge Alison DiLaurentis. But when her friend and follower Spencer Hastings tries to break out, she finds herself against a formidable opponent.


It was Alison who pulled me outside, though it had more to do with the others than she'd like to admit. She had a death grip on my arm, eyes demanding. I watched the fireflies float in the grass and the sun sneaking away behind the horizon. I could hear the echo of the music from the barn, and the laughter of the others.

"Promise me you'll never make me do that again." She said, eyes digging holes in my head. I felt this strange, warped sense of accomplishment, her failure made my success even sweeter. Sure, Alison was powerful. But she wasn't unparalleled.

"Look at you." I said, my voice dripping acid. "Alison, you're better that this." I stated matter of factly, scorning at her.

"Well, you know what Spencer? This isn't a game." She shifted her body weight to her left foot. Her voice came out in a frenzied whisper as she leaned in to my face. "This is some seriously messed up shit. And if you want in on it," Her lip curled and she spat at me, "Be my guest."

I took a hissing breath of summer air, thick with humidity. The Kelly green grass caught the gold of the setting sun, shooting it across the yard like glitter. "This is my business, too." I snarled.

I remembered the way she had cried when I found her in her bathroom after she'd thrown up, the way her stomach poked out just enough that I wondered. I had to wonder. She couldn't be gaining weight, not with all the shit she gave Hanna for being pudgy. I cornered her against the wall, not to intimidate her, but to keep her in the room. I didn't doubt that she would try to walk her way out of things, but I had a strong resolve. I listened to each word she spun, looking for the truth in her lies. I had told her, "I know you're pregnant."

It was her who had thrown the first punch, but I got the last.

Once, I had even walked in on her hands running over Emily's waist, when she was sure I'd gone home. The way she'd ushered me out, I knew something was up. She could have been more careful, at the least. I stood in the doorframe silently, watching them, waiting. I was no peeping tom, but I knew they were bound to look up, and so I waited. When her eyes met mine, Emily's face shot red and she went totally still. Alison whipped her head around, blond hair sweeping across Em's face.

"Spencer, you're disgusting." She spat the words out like they tasted bad, glaring at me accusatorily. "Get out."

Emily wouldn't look at me. "She doesn't love you." I said as I turned to leave, and Alison had me on the floor before I even knew she was coming.

I only got one good hit in before Emily pulled her off of me as she spat profanities in my direction.

"Don't fall for it."

Alison screamed again, but Emily had her. I didn't care what she had to say about me- I had won that time, though my nose flowed with red blood.

Emily was no contest. I knew she would always take Alison's side, she loved her more than her own consciousness. God, it was really sad, watching them. How their eyes pleaded with her, how she could manipulate them with just a glance. But when she heard me, when I did break through, she knew I was speaking the truth. There was this silent sense of camaraderie between us.

When we were around all three of them, we kept a pretty strong act together. It was all about saving our own asses- it outweighed our desire to sabotage the other. She took a couple of snarky, well aimed blows at me, but I always rebutted her. The girls though nothing of it.

Hanna was no problem. It was incredible how much control Alison had over her. It was almost unsettling how much stripping down someone's entire sense of identity could do. On a fundamental level, she craved Ali's approval. She wasn't dumb, though she sometimes acted that way. She was just brainwashed.

Aria, though, was tougher. She was harder to sway, harder to lie to. I knew that she wasn't a sucker for Ali's charms, though it wasn't like she couldn't fool her. And Aria was pretty, but she was no competition for Alison. Alison knew the town like the back of her hand, and she was only fifteen. Aria, though, was strange. Dictionary definition strange, and by nature she was more independent. With that damn pig she'd carry around, it was a wonder Ali didn't take more swings at her. Not that I'd wanted her to.

"I don't know what you plan to tell the others, Alison." I spat.

"What they don't know can't hurt them." She countered, smirking at me.

"You can't treat them like they don't matter. They're real people, and you're their _friends._"

"You know they're not mature enough to handle this," She peeked over my shoulder at the barn, still swelling with music. They were oblivious, "And neither are you. You don't understand."

"I understand just fine, and don't you _dare_ condescend to me." I spat at her and she shoved me backwards. When I retaliated, slamming her to the ground, I was unsettled by the look on her face. How she just stared right through me and let her weight hit the ground. Like she deserved it.

"I thought your friends meant more to you than this." I measured each word out carefully.

"They're not my friends." She told me, laughing. "They don't mean anything to me. And neither," She pushed herself off the ground forcefully, "Do you."

"If that were true, you wouldn't be here." I don't ask her for validation.

She turns away from me and storms back to the barn. "Alison. Get your ass back here." I grab her arm and fling her body back around to face me.

"Get the fuck off of me!" She snarled, yanking her arm away with such force it scared me. The white ghosts of my fingertips lingered on her skin for moments after.

My mind floats back to the day that I found Hanna in the bathroom on the second floor of Alison's house, her fingers down her throat as she hugged the toilet. I didn't care about Alison in that moment, I just rushed across the room and pulled her back, away, and into my arms. There was vomit in her hair and mascara- colored tears streaking down her face, and I felt rage filling up inside of me, slowly but steadily. As she sobbed onto my shoulder, I stroked her arm and stared out the window beside us.

The way my anger built surprised me, how it had nothing to say.

"Who did this to you?" I'd whispered. I didn't get a response, but I didn't need one.

All of that anger returned to me then, swelling inside me and moving my limbs without my permission or consent. "Alison. Get back here. I swear to God, if you go back inside that barn without me, I will-"

She cut me off with another shove, but I caught my weight before it hardly got the chance to falter. "Keep your hands off of me and listen." I growled at her, low and guttural. She glared at me through the curtain of her blond curls. "I swear I will tell all of them what happened last summer. I will tell Aria that you fucked her boyfriend, I will tell Emily that you're using her, I will tell Hanna that you gave her an eating disorder."

"You think they'll care? You think they have the capacity to stop caring what I think?"

"Yes, and I don't know why you don't. They're real people. And maybe they're not onto you yet, but what's to say they don't know how to listen?"

"They're not going to listen to you. I'm their leader, the alpha. You can't argue with the truth."

"Answer me this, Alison. Why do you think they follow you?"

"Because I'm powerful."

"No," I said, speaking each word as though I was teaching it to her. "It's because _they_ are _followers_. They don't need you."

She didn't try to argue with me, just turned away and stormed back into the barn. "Tell them what you want. They will _never_ believe you." She threw the door open, and turned to hiss at me, "I'll see to that."

The door creaked shut as the barn swallowed her, and I stood outside in the silence. The sun had given up, light supplemented only by the streetlights and fireflies. It was a strange, eerie feeling that rose around me, so I did what I should have done to start with: I returned to the rest of them.

I took a spot next to Aria on the sofa, hand falling on her shoulder as I lowered myself. She ran her fingers across mine quickly and smiled.

Another uninvited memory slipped into the forefront of my mind. Aria was storming out of the hall at my house. It was Halloween night, and we were geared up for a long night of partying. A single tear strained at the corner of her eye, but she wiped it out before it could escape. "Aria?" I grabbed her shoulder. "What's wrong?" I'd scanned her eyes.

"Alison knows something you don't. Something she shouldn't, and she's using it against me." Her lip had trembled, and her arms snaked across her torso.

I had taken her in my arms, feeling hot tears spill onto my clothes. She regained herself quickly, but I watched her carefully for the rest of the night.

"Hanna, truth or dare." Alison demanded, solo cup hanging in the hand suspended off the arm of the other couch.

"Um," She stumbled over her own words, "Truth."

"Would you rather be fat and happy or skinny and miserable?" She pawed, sipping at her mystery drink.

"Skinny," Hanna said, because it was obviously the only right answer. Any one paying attention could have known that she didn't mean it, but it was such a stupid question anyway. Who the hell would rather be miserable than happy, whatever their appearance? Alison was just waiting for her to rip at the seams and spill out onto the coffee table, but she didn't. I sent her a silent congratulations. "Aria, truth or dare." Hanna passed it on, pulling her feet beneath her.

With a glint in her eyes, Aria said, "Dare."

"I dare you to give that chair a lap dance."

It was a dumb dare, obviously. We all knew it was a dumb dare, but that didn't mean it wasn't funny. It could have been funny any time, and I laughed despite the anger that was still sitting stagnant in my chest as she walked over to straddle the chair. We all laughed in a crescendo, because who _doesn't _love watching their best friend make a fool of themselves, until she, blushing, returned to her seat beside me. "Emily, it's your turn."

"Truth?"

Aria readied a question, but Alison beat her to it. "How was it with Ben?"

"It was… uh, I don't know, good." Her face flushed a furious red and she ducked her head. Ali smirked at her and said, "If it's good, it's good. Don't question it, honey." Emily denied her eye contact for a solid ten minutes after that, but she could never really hold a grudge.

"Spencer, I think it's your turn." Alison said, eyes glimmering.

Denying her the satisfaction, I spat, "Dare."

"Take off all your clothes." Every head in the room whipped around to shoot her quizzical looks.

I knew this trick. She didn't have anything up her sleeve, not really. All she was aiming for was cold, hard humiliation.

She repeated herself. "All of them." I shot her a look, accepting her challenge, and lifted my shirt off over my head, tossing it to the floor.

Aria did a cat whistle, and everyone laughed, heads thrown back. Being the butt of the joke pissed me off, but I kept my face still as I slid out of my pants, exposing only my gray underwear and mismatched white bra. Ali did a sweeping motion with her finger, and, while keeping the blush off of my face, I unclasped the bra and let it fall to the floor, followed quickly by my underwear. "Okay. Let's do this shit." I said, and no one but Ali had the composure to meet my eyes.

"Now go run across your backyard. When you're done, make a lap around the house."

Without missing a beat, I completed the entire dare in a few lengthy seconds, Aria tossing a blanket around my shoulders as I returned. Indignantly, I held it over my body but did not return to my clothes.

"Alison, it's your turn."

"No tag backs, sweetie." She said, chuckling still.

"That's bullshit." I said.

She threw her hands up as if to say, come at me.

"I dare you to tell everyone the real reason for your weight gain last summer." I spat. Panic flashed across her face like a frame in a video, but she concealed it nicely. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who saw it, because they were all too busy gaping at me.

In the end, I guess war doesn't determine who's right. Only who's left.


End file.
